One national capital that won't be queueing up to endorse her is Budapest, following Reding's escalating row with the Hungarian government over the country's changes to its judicial system, which it has been claimed allow for too much political interference.
A bitter sub-plot in this argument has been the fate of Francis Tobin - an Irish national found responsible for a fatal road accident in Hungary in 2000 - whose extradition the Irish Courts have refused to sanction despite the issuing of a European Arrest Warrant. Reding seemingly backed the Irish position, claiming she was "not surprised" by the decision.
The latest chapter in this row has been sparked by comments Reding made during a visit to Bulgaria yesterday. We haven't been able to find the original source, but it appears she suggested the Hungarian Supreme Court had been dissolved. The Hungarian government's reaction did not pull any punches:
"These actions and lies of Viviane Reding cause great harm to the public image and reputation of the European Commission. Viviane Reding is either extremely ignorant, or she is lying out of political interests."
"We call on her to make the data on which she has based her attack public, or failing that, to make an immediate apology."Ouch!
There are some issues with 'one size fits all' and perpetual agreements.
ReplyDeleteI'm often surprised when I come across the belief that Europe is standardised and the only thing left to do is to formalise the standardisation by pushing supranational legislation into place. I've lived and worked in three different EU countries, I've professionally dealt with business in more than ten different EU countries. I know that EU countries are different. Some countries are similar, some are very very different.
The current example of the EAW: It is a 'one size fits all' system. It is practically perpetual (almost impossible to change and literally impossible to withdraw from).
The approach will work if:
-the countries are similar, if not then it'll fail
AND
-the system is perfect (almost impossible to change it so if it is not perfect and it can't be changed to be improved then...) from inception, if not it'll fail
The eurocrats approach cannot work at present, it is time to reform the EU to better reflect the reality. No more permanent one size fits all, no more perpetual supranational agreements. Flexibility and cooperation is the way forward.
@Jesper
ReplyDeleteInteresting way of looking at it, thank you.
Fully agree look at all large countries even the US there are huge regional differences. While making your legislation you have to keep that in mind.
And as the Tobin case shows they clearly donot. And it looks very similar to refugees to Greece cases. They seem not to learn.
At the end of the day you put a top-10 human rights and developped country in the same group as bananarepublics like Greece and most of Eastern Europe.
Even worse you add countries that are clearly still in the bananarepublic stage under basically normal conditions to the club (Kroatia). While with Roumenia and Bulgaria a lot of things went and are still going wrong. They simply donot learn.
Sounds about right for what after all is a totally corrupt and undemocratic institution!
ReplyDeleteVery difficult to Cause great harm and damage to an image that has been tarnished for years and after all the commission is only a highly paid retirement home for failed politicians, who are clueless about anything other than filling their own pockets with our money.
ReplyDeleteSurely not an accusation? It must sound like a compliment to those whose livelihood is to be ignorant and to lie?
ReplyDelete